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This is what I would say are the top 3: 1. Gains in the South The struggle of civil rights was always more about the planter class (term used loosely i.e. Crump in TN not technically a "planter" but he was the regional ruling class). Planters only held power because of the Democratic Party of the time. Much more to this, but just as one example, you can look at someone like Eastland, who was on critical committees and held such power by Dem party rules of seniority, and boasted of shutting down over 100 civil rights measures. Even if Eastland was replaced by an even more racist Republican, that R would not have had the power of Eastland. Guys like LBJ continued to yield to Eastland. Put simply, R victories in the South meant uprooting planter power, which meant the South could join the natural progress of the rest of the country. Eisenhower revived a Republican Party on the ropes. 2. Legal foundation for the entire civil rights movement Ike put in 4 Supreme Court justices after the Brown ruling that all supported the decision, but implementation of Brown fell solely on the lower courts, and Ike's response was to fill the lower courts with some of the best judges to push civil rights, rejecting the deals proposed by Eastland and LBJ that would have resulted in segregationist judges (the only reason this isn't ranked higher, is because much of this was undone, when JFK took essentially the deal that Ike rejected, allowing Eastland to handpick dozens of judges in the South). Many of the most iconic moments in the civil rights struggle can be traced to an Eisenhower lower court appointment. It was Frank M. Johnson, an Eisenhower appointment, that struck down segregated seating of public buses in Montgomery after the Rosa Parks incident. It was Johnson again who ordered George Wallace to allow Martin Luther King Jr to march from Selma to the capitol steps of Montgomery. It was Harlan Grooms, an Eisenhower appointment, that gave a court order for the belligerent University of Alabama to admit its first black student, Autherine Lucy. It was Ronald Davies, an Eisenhower appointment, that nullified a previous ruling to block integration of nine students from the school in Little Rock. It was Elbert Tuttle, John Robert Brown, and John Minor Wisdom, all Eisenhower appointments, that led in the struggle to have James Meredith admitted to Mississippi University, and that ruled to permit MLK Jr. to conduct meetings and demonstrations in Albany, Georgia. The strength of the entire movement was using legal grounds to make real gains that hurt the planters, and these legal grounds were laid by Eisenhower. 3. Desegregating the military There are many small individual examples of things Ike did to push for advancement, but the reason this individual act makes the list is because I beleve military desegregation really did make a big difference in the mindset of the country, especially in the South that has strong respect for military service. Truman started this, of course, but his executive order was largely ignored. Much of the military desegregation under Truman happened out of convenience during the Korean War. Eisenhower pulled a lot more weight with the military, to say the least, and was able to personally convince even hard opponents within the military, even making personal calls and going as far as he could, pushing for any military base schools to be desegregated as well (this was before Brown). At the very least, Eisenhower should share credit with Truman on this, but rarely gets any

That is literally the opposite of what Atwater said in the 1981 interview, where he played through a scenario of Republicans using “code words” only to demonstrate how abstract the code words would need to get, which would prove how dead of an issue racism was. No serious person uses that interview as some kind of confession of a nefarious Southern strategy since more of the audio was released. Here, even one of the biggest proponents of the “party switch” nonsense corrects people’s misuse of the quote, instead arguing Atwater was lying

This claim is one of the best indicators that someone has no idea what they're talking about. It's hard to track the layers in which you are wrong. No, it was not recorded. No, Nixon did not record everything in the oval office. The recording system was set up in 1971. At any rate, the quote you keep trying to cite was from an interview in 1994, and has nothing to do with the oval office recordings. The interviewer released a book on the interviews in 1996, in which the incendiary war on drugs portion of the interview was strangely not included. Years later, Ehrlichman died. The interviewer finally released that portion in 2012. Ehrlichman's closest friends, family, and associates say that he would not have said such a thing. Even if we were to, for some reason set aside all critical thinking, and believe that Ehrlichman made that claim, knowing anything about Ehrlichman would force heavy skepticism. He went through phases of drastic resentment towards Nixon for not pardoning him. There were times when he would say anything he could think of to make Nixon look bad, and still he apparently didn't come up with the war on drugs hoax until that conspiracy already started to crop up more than 20 years later? And then of course, there are all the mountains of counter-evidence. The administration's reasons were well-documented and discussed. Drugs were an insanely big problem at the time, and although Nixon's "war on drugs" is often conflated with Reagan's, Nixon's was clearly beneficial and was pushed/supported by black groups of the time. Just as one example of the differences, Nixon's Controlled Substances Act of 1970 actually eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. In Nixon's advertising to black voters, fighting drugs was one of his appeals. It was seen as racist to let the black community be ravaged by drugs

The whole party switch thing is generally silly, but it's especially delusional looking at Georgia. Zell Miller won election to become a senator in 2000

The picture on the left is Johnson with Richard Russell, who did not move an inch on civil rights. More often with his southern friends, LBJ took the approach of acting pitiful, saying that none of it was his fault, and inevitable. At any rate, Russell looks like he couldn't care less in this pic. The picture on the right is with Louis Martin, a journalist and civil rights activist. Not sure what LBJ is bullying him about...

If you bring up that the Byrd Organization ruled Virginia like a one-party oligarchy for decades, they tell you of their amazing change of heart. George Wallace, the face of segregation, a miraculous reversal and forgiveness. Richard Russell, leader of the Southern bloc? James Eastland, single-handily responsible for killing 100 civil rights measures? Loyal democrats, forget their names. Planters like Jimmy Carter or the founder of the SPLC? Don’t look into their past. The left has been completely forgiving of the people most responsible, yet will say things like this, as if a broad “South” is responsible for all problems

“Our constitution is colorblind.” - John Marshall Harlan

That quote does not mean what you think it means

A hymn to check out today: There is a Fountain Filled with Blood. Unlike many great hymn writers who have stories of God turning their life around, William Cowper had a difficult life until the end. His mother died when he was 6, he developed a stutter, suffered from depression and anxiety, and attempted suicide several times. Still he wrote: “Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be until I die. When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave, Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save.”

“It was no paradox that Northern Progressives took [Ulrich] Phillips to their heart and found his picture of the South acceptable and congenial. Racism was an ingredient of Progressivism and wholly compatible with its brand of reform. […] Under these circumstances and moods it was easy to conciliate the South, and opposition to its views virtually disappeared.” - C. Vann Woodward

When Dems have a "southern strategy," even civil rights icons will defend it. This is what Carter-supporter Shirley Chisolm said of the comment: "Jimmy Carter is a shrewd politician, he's pragmatic. He realized that he has to make appeals to different segments of the country to get the nomination.” "The ethnic purity remark began to bring the blue collar workers behind Carter. It was a fantastic political strategy."

Phillips always said that his strategy wasn’t used, and other staff and Nixon confirm. Isn’t it more relevant what Nixon actually said in campaigns and speeches in regard to “law and order?” It obviously was not a “dog whistle.” Nixon: “And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.” “Continued racial violence and disorders in the cities of the nation will produce growing disenchantment with the cause of civil rights–even among its staunchest supporters.” “From mob rule, it is but a single step to lynch law and the termination of the rights of the minority.” “In short, if the rule of law goes, the civil rights laws of recent vintage will be the first casualties.”